Weighted Mean Scores Research Articles

Services Rendered by Various Marketing Agencies to the Banana Grower in Burhanpur District of Madhya Pradesh, India

A study was conducted to find out the services rendered by various marketing agencies to the banana growers in Burhanpur district of Madhya Pradesh. Services defined as the degree to which farmer has rendered various marketing services which have provided by marketing agencies. Services related to marketing information, consulting, selling, credit, grading, and, transportation were enlisted in a pre-tested interview schedule. The farmers were asked to rank the agencies on the basis marketing, agencies, storage, credit facilities, and transportation of services rendered by them in the order of importance. The opinion of the farmers was ranked on the basis of weighted mean score. The result of the analysis has shown that the Banana growing farmers prefer Madhusudan kela agency for marketing, credit facilities, transportation and selling services.

Changes in social isolation and loneliness prevalence during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: The JACSIS 2020-2021 study.

The recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has changed people's social connections with others and society. This study aimed to describe changes in the prevalence of social isolation and loneliness by demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, health conditions, and outbreak situations in residential prefectures among Japanese people between the first year (2020) and the second year (2021) of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used data from the Japan COVID-19 and Society Internet Survey (JACSIS) study, a large-scale web-based nationwide survey conducted with 53,657 participants aged 15-79 years in August-September 2020 and September-October 2021 (25,482 and 28,175 participants, respectively). Social isolation was defined as less than once a week in the total frequency of contact with family members or relatives who were living apart and friends/neighbors. Loneliness was assessed using the three-item University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale (score range, 3-12). We used generalized estimating equations to estimate the prevalence of social isolation and loneliness in each year and the difference in prevalence between 2020 and 2021. The weighted proportion (95% confidence interval) of social isolation in the total sample was 27.4% (25.9, 28.9) in 2020 and 22.7% (21.9, 23.5) in 2021, representing a change of -4.7 percentage points (-6.3, -3.1). The weighted mean scores of the UCLA Loneliness Scale were 5.03 (4.86, 5.20) in 2020 and 5.86 (5.81, 5.91) in 2021, representing a change of 0.83 points (0.66, 1.00). The detailed trend changes for social isolation and loneliness were noted in the demographic subgroups of socioeconomic status, health conditions, and outbreak situation in the residential prefecture. Social isolation decreased from the first to the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas loneliness increased. Assessing the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on social isolation and loneliness contributes to understanding who was particularly vulnerable during the pandemic.

Sustainable Management Practice (SMP) of Green Features in Office Property in Lagos, Nigeria

In this study, we examine the adoption of sustainable management practice (SMP) for green features in an office building using Lagos office property as a case study. The opinion of the professional property managers was sampled, and their responses were analyzed by weighted mean score (WMS), one simple test statistic (t-stats), severity index (S.I.), and factor analysis model. The study discovered that while energy-efficient related green features were the most incorporated, property managers often manage the efficient use of spaces among other green features in the office property. The property managers are yet to fully adopt the SMP, but sustainable resource management and repair and replacement maintenance management were highly considered among the SMP. The challenges of SMP were categorized into three broad barriers: GB project cost/finance, economic/market expectation, and professionalism/institutional barriers. We concluded that the country's property managers are yet to adopt SMP fully. We recommended the integrated GB practice advocacy, encouragement of strong institutional backing for developing the country's GB rating tools, and professionalism for SMP to thrive in the country.

Doubly weighted mean score estimating functions with a partially observed effect modifier

Effect modification plays a central role in stratified medicine, of which the goal is often to find biomarker profiles that identify individuals who benefit from a treatment of interest. We consider the problem of causal inference regarding the effect modifying role of a biomarker, which is only available for some individuals in an observational study. We develop inverse probability weighted mean score estimating functions with one weight to account for confounding and a second weight for the missing data process. An iterative approach is described for solving the equations in the spirit of the expectation-maximization algorithm, and large sample properties of the resulting estimator are developed. Simulation studies are conducted to compare the proposed method with a doubly weighted complete case analysis and a propensity score weighted multiple imputation approach. An application to a study of the effect of a biologic therapy on inflammation in a rheumatology cohort is given for illustration.

Factors Responsible for Discrimination against Single Adults in Tenant Selection in the Akure Property Market, Nigeria

It is the aim of the sustainable development goal 10.3 to put an end to all discriminatory practices by 2030. However, despite the agenda, discrimination still thrives in the property market. The study identifies factor responsible for discrimination against single adults in Akure property market in order to determine its prevalence. A structured questionnaire was used to obtain information from a sample of Estate Surveying and Valuation firms in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. The obtained information was examined using Weighted Mean Score and Factor Analysis. Factor analysis is a statistical approach for describing variability in observed variables in terms of a possibly smaller number of unseen variables known as factors. The findings of this study shows that four (4) factors namely default in the payment of rent, susceptibility to crime and immorality, unemployment and un-definable movements majorly influence discrimination against single adults at tenants selection in the Akure rental market. Also, the research showed that other factors like poor attitude towards property maintenance, default in the payment of utility bills and service charge, not being security conscious, non-cooperative attitudes with co-tenants, not cleaning premises, subletting the property, having many visitors, promiscuity do not fuel the chances of being discriminated against by Estate Surveyors and Valuers at tenants selection. Therefore, this study recommends that housing equity lectures should be included in the MCPD programmes organized by the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) both at the state and national levels.

Objectives of Extension Education: An Analysis of Perception of KVK Professionals

Krishi Vigyan Kendra provides training to various stakeholders as a means of delivering technology. As a profession, the KVK professionals should have the holistic understanding and appropriate perception towards objectives of extension education. The objective of study was to analyze the perception of KVK professionals towards objectives of extension education. The study was conducted during March-August, 2021 using structured questionnaire. The sample of the study included 150 KVK scientists from 145 KVKs spread over 24 states and Union territories. The study assessed the perception of the KVK professionals towards the objectives of Extension. This Perception towards objectives was measured by using 5 point continuum on Liker scale with the help of 34 statements. The objective “Communicating the research information that is useful for economic and practical purposes” scored first rank with 66.67 weighted mean score and also revealed that majority of KVK professionals were having favorable Perception regarding objectives (74.67%) of extension followed by equal number of respondents (12.66%) were having both highly favorable and unfavorable perceptions towards objectives of extension. Additionally, it was shown that information seeking behaviour had positive and significant relationship with the perception of KVK professionals regarding objectives of extension education. Step-wise regression model revealed that information seeking behavior contributed about 2.70 per cent of total of variances in perceptions toward objectives of extension. Hence, it can be concluded that KVK professionals need to have favourable perception towards objectives of extension for executing mandates of KVK more successfully.

Faktori koji utiču na učešće populacije žena u procesu prerade palminog ulja za područje lokalne samouprave Ife na severu države Osun, Nigerija

The study assessed women's involvement in palm oil processing in Ife North Local Government Area, Osun State, Nigeria. A multistage sampling procedure was used to select 120 women palm oil processors. Primary data collected with the aid of wellstructured interview schedule were subjected to frequency counts, percentage, mean, standard deviation and Chi-square analysis. The results reveal that majority (73.3%) of the palm oil processors were married, with the mean age of 50.2±15.173 years and years of palm oil processing experience averaged 24.713+13.670. Oil drying, x̅=3.87, ranked 1st of all the processing activities the respondents were involved in. Close to half (47.5%) of the women palm oil processors were at a medium level of involvement. High cost of labour and transportation ranked 1st with a weighted mean score of x̅=3.04 of all the constraints. There was significant association between age (ch2=18.730, p=0.001), marital status (ch2=15.663, p=0.047), primary occupation (ch2=20.207, p=0.003), level of education (ch2=15.821, p=0.045), experience (ch2=16.607, p=0.034) and involvement in palm oil processing. The study concluded that there was medium level of involvement in palm oil processing among the women. It was recommended that governmental and non-governmental agricultural agencies should introduce modern method of palm oil processing to the women palm oil processors in the study area.

Optimizing Vaccine Access: A Web-Based Scheduling System with Geo-Tagging Integration and Decision Support for Local Health Centers

The system created aims to produce an online vaccination appointment scheduling system with geo-tagging integration and a decision-support mechanism for neighborhood health clinics. With a decision support mechanism that suggests the essential vaccines based on their account details, it is made to meet the unique vaccination needs of each patient. The system includes immunizations that are accessible locally, and patients and midwives can manage their own corresponding information through personal accounts. Viewers of websites can visualize the distribution of vaccines by purok thanks to geotagging. The Agile Scrum Methodology was modified by the researchers for early delivery, change flexibility, and continual system improvement in order to accomplish the study’s main goal. In order to assess the system’s acceptability in terms of functional adequacy, performance efficiency, compatibility, usability, reliability, security, maintainability, and portability, it was designed in accordance with the ISO 25010 Product Software Quality Standards. Following the assessment, the system was given an average total weighted mean score of 4.62, which represents a verbal interpretation of “strongly agree”. This score demonstrates that the evaluators were in agreement that the system met the requirements of ISO 25010 for Product Software Quality Standards.

Perceived Satisfaction of Beneficiaries of Training Organized under Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan in Banda District of Uttar Pradesh, India

The main aim of this study was to perceive the satisfaction of beneficiaries (migrant workers returning to their villages in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak) of training received for employment and livelihood security. The ex-post facto design was used for this study. Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Banda, Banda University of Agriculture and Technology, Banda (Uttar Pradesh). A total of 18 Vocational trainings of three days each for migrant laborers from July 2020 to March 2021. KVK, Banda imparted a total of 18 Vocational trainings. Each training has 35 participants, thus a total of 630 participants have benefitted from this training. After training, 50 participants from different courses were randomly selected as respondents and have been personally interviewed with the help of a semi-structured interview schedule for data collection. The descriptive statistics method was used for data analysis. The weighted mean score method was used to rank the perceived satisfaction with training. It was found that 78.00 percent of participants rated excellent in terms of course content coverage of the training program whereas infrastructure used for training, quality and usefulness of study material, use of audio/visual aids, the behavior of faculty members/ resource personnel, and usefulness of the training program in real life application rated excellent by 50.00, 70.00, 62.00, 84.00 and 92.00 percent of participants respectively. It was found that 68.00 percent of participants suggested that the duration of training should be increased from 3 days to 5 days and 76.00 percent of participants suggested that a farm tour should be included for a better understanding of a topic. Based on the above findings, it can be concluded that the majority of the GKRA beneficiaries were most satisfied with the course content/coverage of the training program, the quality, and the usefulness of the study materials provided during training.

Satisfaction of dairy farmers towards attributes of services rendered by privately practicing para-vets at farmers’ doorstep in different states of India

A study was conducted in 2021 to measure the level of satisfaction of farmers towards para-veterinary services in four districts of India, namely Mathura, Hisar, Jaipur, and Ahmadnagar of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, respectively, using an exclusive 5-point Likert type scale. A total of 160 dairy farmers were surveyed under the random sampling method of investigation. In this study, ordered logistic regression was used to determine the predictors of satisfaction towards the delivery of animal health services to farmers. When the cause-effect relationship was analyzed, it was found that education, herd size, and annual income were negatively associated with satisfaction towards para-veterinary services. Comparative analysis of weighted mean scores for satisfaction revealed that dairy farmers were moderately satisfied with para-veterinary services in dimensions of behavioural aspects and, the cost of rendered service. When overall satisfaction of farmers towards para-veterinary services was analyzed, it was found that 44.38% of farmers were highly satisfied (having scale value of 0.42 and above on 0 to 1 point scale), followed by 32.50% respondents having a moderate level of satisfaction (value of 0.29-0.41). Para-vets need to put more effort in satisfying farmers vis-à-vis roles associated with extension and advisory services and, animal welfare aspects. Quality of service is the major factor affecting the satisfaction of the clientele. Thus, assessing the satisfaction of farmers towards para-veterinary services could be helpful in delivery of competent and efficient minor veterinary services at farmer’s door-step.

ASSESSMENT OF OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE PRACTICES IN FACILITIES MANAGEMENT OF OFFICE BUILDINGS IN LAGOS, NIGERIA

The development of facility management (FM) in Nigeria is relatively new and limited in scope although it has been introduced for more than four decades. This study attempts to assess the operation and maintenance practices in the FM of office buildings from the Nigeria context, aimed to address issues concerning activities of operation and maintenance. It also intends to reveal the adoption of FM techniques and associated challenges in the office buildings in Lagos., Nigeria. A total of 216 members of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) were sampled using purposive sampling techniques and their responses were analysed by descriptive statistics such as weighted mean score (WMS), severity index (S.I), and Kruskal-Wallis H test (KWT). The study found that the major FM activities that are mostly engaged include space management, power plant/electricity maintenance, waste management, lift maintenance, general cleaning services, routine maintenance, and water management. While the preferred FM technique is a blended approach (both the preventive and the corrective methods). The prominent challenges in their respective categories were design flaws and poor installation of equipment (technical); inconsistency in financing maintenance, and high cost of maintenance components (finance); weak standards and poor enforcement (administrative), indifferent attitude towards maintenance issues, wrong perception and lack of foresight (top management). The study concluded that the operations of the FM practice are still in their infancy stage and characterised by prominent challenges of technical, administrative, and finance. However, being a multi-disciplinary profession, the study suggests efficient collaborative effort can be strengthened by an institutional framework that encourages human capacity development and enhanced technology to foster sustainable facilities management practice in the country.

Effect of organizational immunity in enhancing the strategic capabilities of the company: an applied study on the Iraqi general insurance company

This research diagnoses the impact of the organizational immunity dimensions represented by the organizational (memory, genes, and learning) on enhancing the strategic capabilities dimensions of the company represented by (marketing capabilities, administrative capabilities, technological capabilities, creative capabilities). The study also tries to list those dimensions in the order of priority. The researchers adopted the questionnaire as a tool for collecting data from 55 officials at the administrative levels (higher, middle, and lower levels). SPSS, (28Version) was used to calculate (weighted mean scores, standard deviation, relative importance, coefficient of variation, simple and multiple regression, F-test, corrected interpretation coefficient AR²). The most prominent findings of the research are: The organizational immunity, with its combined dimensions, affects the strategic capabilities of the company in a significant way. However, there are no statistically significant differences in the participants' response to the research variables attributed to the personal and functional variables represented by (gender, age, educational qualification, administrative level and the years of service).

A Systematic Review of Common Drunkorexia Measures: Examining Gender Differences across Scales

ABSTRCT Background Drunkorexia includes calorie restriction, excessive exercise, and/or purging in combination with alcohol consumption. Exploring drunkorexia by gender could inform potential intervention to address varying rates of drunkorexia, blood alcohol concentrations, and alcohol-related consequences. Purpose The purpose of this systematic review is to examine potential gender differences in drunkorexia among college students. Methods Search engines were used to find studies utilizing college students (2012–2021) and drunkorexia measures, resulting in 22 studies. Results Weighted mean scores and independent-sample t-tests of subscales for both the Compensatory Eating and Behaviors in Response to Alcohol Consumption Scale (CEBRACS) and Drunkorexia Motives and Behaviors Scale (DMBS) showed no significant differences between females and males. Discussion The lack of difference indicates the need to consider diet, purging, and exercise as separate drunkorexia control techniques as opposed to one drunkorexia construct and indicates trends by gender may have evolved over the last decade. Translation to Health Education Practice Understanding the unique direct and secondhand health effects of drunkorexia by gender might assist in counteracting negative alcohol consequences potentially exacerbated by drunkorexia (e.g., overdose, injuries, death), and inform multiple CHES® and MCHES® areas of responsibilities and competencies to improve interventions to reduce risky alcohol consumption among college students.

Relationships and Potentials of Proximate Property Markets: The Case of Aba and Port Harcourt in Nigeria

Unavoidably, the geographical proximity of urban spaces creates relationships which impact their development. One such relationship is economic in nature and this is reflected by production, investment and market activities. Since these activities have implications for development in the property sector, this paper examines the relationships between the proximate property markets of Aba and Port Harcourt. For the purpose of contextualising the influence of proximity on these markets, a survey of property practitioners within the study location was carried out. A 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire was deployed for the data collection. The analysis was done using the weighted mean score statistical approach. The results reveal Port Harcourt is a larger and more resilient property market; also a larger economy which supplies input to Aba whilst receiving the latter’s output. But Aba’s manufacturing economy surprisingly demonstrates a per capita GDP parity with Port Harcourt’s oil-driven economy. Lastly, proximity of the two cities’ would have impacted the environs to a greater extent had the seaport been in productive use over the years. The study recommends the strengthening of these property markets and economies by optimisation of the advantages of proximity

Emotional Intelligence and its Application to Real Estate Service Quality: A Knowledge Gap Analysis

The demand for quality of service among practicing firms of real estate to achieving customers’ satisfaction has become the major concern of real estate professional bodies. However, customers’ satisfaction is influenced by their emotional needs in decision making. Therefore, this study develops a conceptualized model for measuring service quality among practicing firms of real estate with the application of emotional intelligence. To assess customers’ satisfaction level, the knowledge gap between perception of real estate firms on expectation of customers and the actual customers’ expected service in the Lagos property market in Nigeria were analyzed. A random selection of 100 members of Nigerian Estate Surveyors and Valuers with a total of 400 real estate customers was purposively selected and administered with a structured questionnaire, However, only 85 retrieved questionnaires from real estate firms and a total of 362 real estate customers responded and utilized for analyzing the data. Knowledge gap analysis model with weighted mean score was employed for data analysis. Findings depicted that real estate firms have a basic knowledge barrier on the adoption of emotional intelligence (with more emphasis on self-awareness and social skills determinants) as an instrument of real estate service quality to satisfy customers’ emotional needs in delivery of service among the practitioners. Therefore, practitioners in the real estate firms need to improve on their knowledge of emotional intelligence as an instrument of real estate service quality to enhance customers’ satisfaction on emotional needs.

The Implementation of Independent Learning Independent Campus: The New Paradigm of Education in Indonesia

Independent Learning Independent Campus (MBKM) is a program to develop an education system that aligns graduate capacity with industrial needs. The compatibility between educational programs and the business world is a challenge in realizing Indonesia as a developed country in the era of the industrial revolution 4.0. This study aims to analyze the impact of the MBKM program on improving the performance of Ibn Khaldun University Bogor. The sample that participated in this study consisted of all active students, lecturers, and administration staff. Questionnaires were distributed to 6100 students, 233 lecturers, and 150 administration staff. The stages of research implementation are as follows: socializing the understanding of MBKM, filling out the survey, calculating the distribution of respondents' filling, and concluding the assessment category using the weighted mean score (WMS) method. It can conclude that MBKM improves the performance of Ibn Khaldun Bogor University with an average percentage of assessment criteria above 75%. From the integration of the weighted mean score assessment criteria and the IPA model, the attribute that needs to get priority for improvement is increasing students' soft and hard skills and the capacity and expertise of lecturers. The implementation of MBKM that can improve graduate learning achievement must be maintained.
 
 Received: 21 April 2022 / Accepted: 29 June 2022 / Published: 5 July 2022

Challenges of Accessing Agricultural Credits by Farmers for Increased Food Production in Delta State, Nigeria

The study investigated the challenges of accessing agricultural credits by farmers for increased food production in Delta State, Nigeria, the specific objectives were to: examine the level of awareness of the sources of agricultural credits to farmers in the study area, ascertain the extent of accessibility of such agricultural credits to farmers, and identify the challenges facing farmers in accessing agricultural credits in Delta State. Descriptive survey design was adopted to assess the farmers. Purposive sampling technique was used to select three LGAs and a total of nine (9) communities while 32 respondents from each of the 9 communities were randomly selected given a total of two hundred and eighty-eight (288) respondents and used for the study. Weighted mean scores derived from the Likert type rating scale was used to analyze the data collated for the study, while the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was engaged for test of significance at 0.05% level of significance. The findings showed that the farmers were highly aware of Personal savings (GM = 2.49), Cooperative societies (GM = 2.47), Government bodies (GM = 2.28), Micro Finance bank (GM = 2.28) and Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme (GM = 2.18) among others as sources of agricultural credits in Delta State. It indicated that Personal savings, Loan from Cooperative societies, Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Micro Finance Bank and the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme among other formal and informal sources of agricultural credits were highly accessible to farmers in the area. Finally, it showed in the degree of seriousness that: Lack of trust by the lending institutions (GM = 3.32), Poor leadership vision in agriculture (GM = 3.25), Lack of awareness of available agro credits (GM = 3.22), Low perception of farming enterprise by the people (GM = 3.20), High interest rate (GM = 3.05), Not having the required savings with the lending institution (GM = 3.02), beside others were the most serious challenges confronting farmers in accessing agricultural credits in Delta State. All the test results (ANOVA) showed no significant difference among the three LGAs at P > 0.05 significant level. The study therefore, recommended that: Extension Services should be beefed up in the State to cover the gaps of unawareness of agro credit sources and teach farmers how to access them, Extension agents should be encouraged to supervise and recoup government agricultural loans from farmers to facilitate the flow of agricultural credits in the State, State Government should show concern and make policies that would relax the collateral security to enable the poor farmers access to credits as at when due, and A drastic measure should be put in place by government to punish defaulters who bridge the revolving loans from circulation in the State.

Generating the captions for remote sensing images: A spatial-channel attention based memory-guided transformer approach

Remote sensing image captioning (RSIC) is cross-modal interaction task in an artificial intelligence that leads to automatic description of Earth’s geological properties captured from an aerial view. It is noted that, convolutional neural network (CNN) and recurrent neural network (RNN) based encoder–decoder methods are widely adopted for RSIC, but has two main constrains: first, insufficient to capture inherent geographical characteristics due to single level static convolutional features; second, difficult to train regressive time-step sequences. To address these challenges, a novel fully-attentive framework entitled Spatial-Channel Attention based MEmory-guided Transformer (SCAMET) is proposed, which calibrates multilevel visual attentive features and aligns with linguistic information through persistent memory. Here, CNN is integrated with Transformer to generate captions for remote sensing image. To comprehend deeper semantic knowledge of multi-scale, multi-shape, multi-object in remote sensing image, multi-attentive visual features are extracted by employing spatial and channel attention separately. To decode multi-attentive feature into caption, this work proposes memory-guided Transformer as linguistic decoder. Specifically, learnable memory elements are incorporated in multi-head attention block, which perceives intrinsic association within visual multi-attentive features and reconciles with linguistic information. The ablation studies are conducted on three public RSIC datasets, Sydney-captions, UCM-captions and RSICD to evaluate performance of proposed method. The quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal that proposed method performs satisfactory compared to state-of-the-art approaches. This work also proposes a “Weighted Mean Score” index to evaluate conclusive performance of model across all datasets by leveraging global contribution of each test set. The implementation of proposed work is available at: https://github.com/GauravGajbhiye/SCAMET_RSIC.

Evaluation of Agricultural Projects and Extension Services of the Bayelsa State Agricultural Development Programme (ADP)

The study evaluated the agricultural projects and extension services of the Bayelsa State Agricultural Development Programme. Three specific objectives and hypotheses were developed to guide the study. A descriptive survey design was employed to observe a cross-section of the population of the farmers in the three ADP zones, in Bayelsa State. Both purposive and proportionate sampling techniques were used to select two hundred and fifty – four (254) registered farmers for the study. Descriptive statistics such as percentage, arithmetic, and weighted mean scores were used, while inferential statistics - Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at a 0.05% level of probability. The findings showed that agricultural projects carried out in Bayelsa State within the past five years were: Fish farming (GM = 3.18), cropping practices of most crops (GM = 2.97), poultry production (GM = 2.71), seed multiplication/Yam minisette technology (GM = 2.70) and snail farming (GM = 2.59), among others. The findings also cataloged the agro projects that have not been carried out in the area including Yam bag technology (GM = 1.83), Goat/sheep farming (GM = 1.94), Grasscutter/Rabbit farming (GM = 1.80), processing of tubers/grains/plantains into flour and farmers' cooperative formation with an equal grand mean (GM = 2.32), among others. The result indicated that only: Fish farming (GM = 2.89), organic farming (GM = 2.76), poultry production (GM = 2.70), cropping practices of few crops, and snail farming with a marching grand mean (GM = 2.66) had high adoption rate in the study area. Finally, the findings showed that: Lack of insurance practices by farmers (GM = 3.68), when the farmers are not involved in the planning of the project (GM = 3.50), weak government policies/leap services in agriculture (GM = 3.30), when the projects are not guided by the needs of farmers (GM = 3.23), inadequate agricultural credits (GM = 3.14), lack of incentives for farmers (GM = 3.13) and when projects are gender-specific (GM = 3.10), among many other factors add up to the most serious challenges in adopting agricultural projects in Bayelsa State. All the ANOVA results in this study showed that the views of the registered farmers on the agricultural projects carried out by ADP in the past five years did not differ significantly among the three ADP zones in Bayelsa State at a P > 0.05 significant level. The study, therefore, recommended among others that: Agricultural Development Project (ADP) should beef up its extension package and extend worthwhile services to the farmers in their zones; Engagement of qualified Extension Agents in the Ministry of Agriculture with a clear mandate to assist the farm families to grow should be emphasized in Bayelsa State, and Registered farmers should be formed into cooperative groups and be involved in planning agricultural programs that concern them.

Perceived Evidences of Climate Change and Effects on Smallholders Farming Practices in Edo North, Edo State, Nigeria

Food security and sustainable supply remain a big challenge against achieving key SDGs, and this is especially the case in most Sub-Saharan African countries where extreme poverty, social unrest, terrorism, youth unemployment and corruption remain a huge setback to economic development. Climate change is further compounding these problems, with huge implications for the agricultural sector which has over 70% of the population depending on it for livelihood. Smallholder farmers are even worst hit, owing to their limited capital, lack of modern agricultural technology, little or no government supports etc. This study is therefore aimed to investigate the dimensions of changes in the climatic pattern of communities in Edo north, and the associated effects on smallholder farming operations. Primary data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and focused group discussions with sampled crop famers (SCF). The study found that majority of SCF were migrant farmers (44.6 %), while the indigenous farmers only constituted about 33.4 %. In terms of type of crop(s) cultivated in the study area, 145 (28.4 %) of the respondents cultivated multiple crops (tuber/ plantain/ cereal/ vegetables), 26.6 % exclusively cultivated tuber crops (cassava/yam/ cocoyam/ potato), while 16.5 %) solely cultivated plantain/banana. Other farm types include cereal crop (rice/bean/maize/corn) 14.4 %, and vegetables (pumpkin/tomato/melon/okra) 9.5 %. Most notable evidence of climate change was extreme hot temperature in the day (n 29.5%, while extreme cold at night was 23.5%. Similarly, 19.0% of sampled crop farmers also viewed increased rainfall as notable evidence of climate change in the study area, while another 13.5% linked strong wind to climate change. Others notable evidences were flooding 9.5% and delayed, decreased and erratic rainfall with a total percentage of 5.0%. In terms of effects on farming operations, impact on fertilizer and manure application emerged as mostly affected with a weighted mean score (WMS) of 3.05. This was followed by effect on spraying of farm against pest and disease control with a WMS of 2.92, while weeding of farm and late planting ranked 3rd (WMS = 2.87). In terms of impact on the farming families, reduction in farm income and frequent washing away of valuable soil nutrient were mostly reported with the WMS of 3.56. This was followed by poor quality and quantity of yield/output (WMS = 3.42; rank = 2nd).